The Grave
by LaDexter
Summary: Arvin Sloane attempts to get over the death of his wife, Emily, and the guilt he feels surrounding the subject.


Sleep was not an option. Nor was breathing, at that particular moment. He reached for his breath, but nothing come in return, save for a few gasps for air, and then the tears that met the side of his water-filled glass.  
  
It was happening again. It had happened every night since he let the fatal spice fall into her wine glass. He was feeling the reprecussions of the murder. And every night, he would eventually convince himself that he had had no choice; that it had to be done. Tonight, he was not so fortunate.  
  
He had dropped his glass onto the floor, seconds before he fell himself, the glass shards driving into his moist palm. He wept like a child, holding his better hand over his eyes; for some reason, to him, they weren't real tears unless they were to hit something solid. He was stopping them from being real tears. He wouldn't cry over something he had done himself, something he could've prevented. Especially since he was under the impression that this couldn't have prevented.  
  
He felt a pinch of pain drive into his spine. Now, his hands no longer held him up, he was face down on the floor, with a large chunk of glass in his spine. Slowly, he managed to position his head in such a place that allowed him a clear view of his wife.  
  
There she was, again, visiting him. On a typical day, she would cry and scream and break things, wondering why he had let her go. Why he had done it himself. She was vengeful. Why couldn't he have let her die on her own? Why couldn't the cancer have taken her?  
  
She didn't know and she didn't plan to find out. But she was there, every night, when this occurance took place to make him feel the guilt he very well deserved to feel.  
  
He knew he had to get rid of her, again, or he would go through this every night, until eventually, he could no longer go on living with the guilt inside. The guilt of killing his very own wife to put himself in a better light, for his own company, a host of bad intentions.  
  
He often thought that the placement of Emily's grave had been a mistake. He had to move on, he had to forget about it, he had to go on being the business man he had been for so many years; and the neatly-placed grave at the back of the mansion wasn't doing him any favors.  
  
His hands were raised in defeat, as he winced in effort to stand up. She was gone again, but it wouldn't be for long. It would be enough for him to get to sleep for the night. Long enough for him to press out another day in his now-horrible and painful life. He was starting to wonder if it had been worth it; if flying away to a secret land wouldn't have been easier, wouldn't have made him happier.  
  
It wasn't helping to debate the matter, he realized, as he walked up the stairs, sometimes pressing his ripped palm a little too hard on the cold, almost frozen, stair-rail.  
  
As he changed into his bed clothes, he decided not to continue reading the same book he had been reading every night when Emily would visit, the one he would always drop as he gasped for air and tried to keep hold of his wine glass. The same book that would don new tear-stains each and every morning. He had to rid himself of anything that may be the cause of her visits, his lack of breath; he had to change his schedule to accomodate his sanity.  
  
Sleep didn't come so quickly. And when it did, it only lasted for minutes, even if to Arvin it had seemed like hours. Again, he woke up gasping for air, and when air did meet his lungs, it was quickly pulled out again as Emily stood at the foot his bed, a facial expression on her that would kill the kindest soul.  
  
He reached over to the nightstand to grab hold of his glasses, and placed the cold steel on the brim of his nose, but she was already gone. He rushed out of his bed, in a panic, descending the stairs with thirteen loud thumps until he reached the bottom, where upon he placed his slippers on his soon- to-be-bruised feet and pulled on an overcoat.  
  
The glass door slammed loudly, shaking the frame of the doorway as his feet plunked down into the dew-soaken grass. He half-circled the house before he broke out into the woods, pushing branches out of his way, but he was in too much of an unnecessary hurry to avoid some of the brances scratching the side of his face.  
  
Soon after, he was lost. He began breathing heavy again as his small, squinted eyes darted across the forest in search of the grave. As he touched his face, he realized he had lost his glasses earlier in the search, but he wasn't about to go back for them. He was going to make sure that this would be the last of his sleepless nights.  
  
Then, he fell to the ground again, mud filing into the cut in his now numb palm. He squeezed the ground, as now, he was again searching for air. He felt the pinch again and he took a nose-dive into the cold, lifeless mud. And then she spoke.  
  
"You're a bastard, you know that? You killed your own wife. All I was to you, a sacrificial lamb. You know I can't harm you. You know that this is an illusion. This is me, dead. You're on your own, you heartless bastard. I may not be the one to kill you, but the Lord knows that I hope and pray every night, that someone just as worthless as you slits your throat and ends your sad excuse for a life. You're nothing without me. I hope you know that."  
  
Arvin was out of place now; something wasn't right. He struggled to his feet, the pinch in his back slowly disappearing. Quickly, he spotted the grave, now directly in front of him. And there was a barn, not too far from the grave. Panicked, he broke into the barn and retreived a shovel.  
  
The first swing was powerless; the stone barely took note of the hit. The second had more behind it, cracking off a large chunk from the top of the grave. It only took one more hit for a large portion of the stone to be on the ground.  
  
He began to dig. It seemed that hours had passed when the tip of the shovel finally hit the coffin, the sound of which put a chill down his neck, all the way to his heel. Then he remembered the lock that held the coffin shut, so he raised his shovel once again and smashed down onto the coffin. He came no where near the lock. Instead, a huge splice was in the center of the coffin. He wasn't coherent. After another attempt, the lock split open enough for Sloane to pull the top of the coffin open.  
  
Empty. He felt his face drop and the air within his lungs quickly diminished. It didn't take long for him to feel the cold of Emily's body behind his back. He didn't even attempt to turn around before he felt the pinch. This time, however, onto split palm he did not fall; instead, he plunged directly into the coffin. Seconds later, he was in the dark. The coffin lid had been shut.  
  
Light forced his eyes to open. Instead of the interior of the coffin being the first thing in sight, it was the ceiling of his bedroom. He felt for his palm and winced when he touched the wound a little too hard.  
  
He ran down the stairs, barefoot. A scream seeped out of his throat as he walked upon a broken wine glass. It didn't stop him for long though, as he stormed out the door and into the woods towards Emily's grave. It was unharmed. No dirt had been touched, the stone was in the same shape it had been when installed five weeks ago. A shovel was nowhere in sight.  
  
Slowly, he entered the house. It took him a little over two hours to get ready for work and his shower had been eternally long; nearly washing away all the blood that had gathered on his palm and the bottom of his foot.  
  
As he put on his coat and picked up his briefcase to head out the door, he walked over to the mantel above the fireplace, and carefully picked up a picture of his wife, taken two years before, and took his lips and approached the picture with a soft, light kiss. No tear fell from his eye, no air was lost from his lungs. From there on, he was sure that pictures would be his only reminder of his wife.  
  
A smirk spread across his lips as he let the door shut itself. 


End file.
